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In his first Independence Day address as the 15th Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi spoke about the need for (1) ramping up skills, particularly in trades through vocational education as a recurrent and increasingly critical priority for India, and (2) ensuring educational opportunity for girls and women through through adequate separate toilets for them in schools, among other things.

JAIPUR: The Rajasthan high court on Monday issued notices to the state government, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education (RBSE), Allen Career Institute, Kota and Shiv Jyoti School, Kota among others over functioning of "unrecognized" private coaching institutes in the state especially in Kota in an "institutionalized" manner in the name of preparing students for admission to IITs and medical colleges and subverting school education.

The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has advised all States and Union Territories (UTs), barring Jammu and Kashmir, to take appropriate action for the inclusion of “third gender’’ children among socially and educationally backward classes for admission in educational institutions under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) to universalise elementary education.

With nearly one lakh students enrolling in Delhi Government schools each year, the city requires around 500 new schools to meet the demand as per norms under the Right to Education Act, noted Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley while presenting the Delhi Budget on Friday.

The High Court may have ruled that the Right to Education (RTE) Act does not apply to unaided minority schools even if they have been receiving aids in the form of concessions in property tax and lease of land from the government, but activists feel ambiguities persist on the 'aided' and 'unaided' status of schools. One of the major issues on which the HC verdict can have widespread effect, the activists say, is whether schools that have unaided primary and aided secondary sections are liable to reserve 25 per cent students under the RTE Act or not.

The Right to Education Act (RTE Act) entrusted local bodies with immense powers and responsibilities for the improvement of infrastructure and academic standards in government schools in their area. But the steps taken by the City Corporation, which spends around Rs.10 crore annually in the education sector, seems to be ineffective, says a performance report of the Local Fund Audit Department released along with the general audit report recently.

Taking stock at the end of the third year of the implementation of the Right To Education (RTE) Act, a micro study carried out in the three states of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha on inclusion of children with disabilities in the government school system reveals that their enrolment in relation to all children continues to be less than one per cent.